1. FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a drawer box which is included in an electronic money register, a POS terminal, and the like for accommodating coins and notes, and papers such as checks and gift tokens.
2. DESCRIPTION OF THE RELATED ART
A drawer box for accommodating money in an electronic money register, a POS terminal, and the like, is usually structured to include a resin-molded money case provided in a main body of the drawer-type box. FIG. 20 illustrates an exemplary conventional money case.
The money case includes a plurality of coin accommodation portions 1 in a front part thereof, and a plurality of note accommodation portions 2 for horizontally accommodating notes in a stacked manner which are posterior to the coin accommodation portions 1. The note accommodation portions 2 are arranged side by side along a width direction (arrow W) of the money case. Often, the coin accommodation portions 1 have a deep-bottomed shape having a depth substantially equal to the height of the money case, while the note accommodation portions 2 have a shallow-bottomed shape having a depth substantially half of the height of the money case. The note accommodation portions 2 have a shallow-bottomed shape, for example, for the following reasons: an increased depth makes it difficult to take out notes; and a lock unit needs to be provided below the note accommodation portions 2 in order to hold the drawer box in an open or closed state.
A larger note accommodation space is demanded in order to cope with an increase in the numbers of notes caused by issuance of new kinds of high-value notes in overseas countries, and to deal with countries in which many kinds of notes are circulated. However, space-saving is also strongly demanded, which makes it difficult to simply increase the size of the drawer box in order to enlarge the note accommodation space. Therefore, enlargement of the note accommodation space while avoiding an increase in the size of the drawer box has been strongly demanded.
Drawer boxes proposed to cope with such a demand are disclosed, for example, in Japanese Laid-Open Utility Model Publication No. 6-30883, Japanese Laid-Open Utility Model Publication No. 6-15178, Japanese Laid-Open Publication No. 4-352298, Japanese Laid-Open Publication No. 3-80395, and Japanese Laid-Open Publication No. 2-137089.
The drawer box disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Publication No. 4-352298 adopts a structure in which a note accommodation part has a deep-bottomed shape and is divided into an upper and a lower portions by a detachable divider. This structure allows the portion above the divider to be used as a note accommodation portion with a shallow bottom in which notes are accommodated horizontally, and also allows the portion below the divider to accommodate notes in the case where there are many kinds of notes. Therefore, the note accommodation space is enlarged while avoiding an increase in the size of the drawer box.
However, in the case where the portion below the divider is used, the notes accommodated in the portion above the divider need to be taken out and put back together with the divider every time notes are taken out of and put into the portion below the divider. This is time-consuming and troublesome.
Furthermore, since the notes accommodated below the divider cannot be visibly checked without removing the divider, the recognition of the notes is not easily performed.